**everything is fine with me and the baby**
I've heard so much about morning sickness and braxton hicks contractions and epidurals and labor pain, but no one ever told me about this!
Everything was fine until I woke up Sunday morning with awful cramps. Menstrual type cramps. I thought I ate something bad or something like that. I took Tylenol, laid on the couch, and inspected TP all day, but never any blood or anything usual. But man it HURT! And wouldn't let up. It hurt below my belly - above my hairline, and in my groin. Ugh. By late afternoon I pulled out my pregnancy books (even the forbidden one) to see if I could get some answers.
They suggested:
1. round ligament pain
2. miscarriage
Um, ok, that's quite a wide range of possiblilities. By the time Z got home from the grocery store I was in hysterics. I had showered hoping warm water would help but it didn't. He made me call the dr. The on-call dr. called back pretty immediately and listened to my issues. She suggested I come to the hospital ante-partum area and she would meet me there. She said we would both sleep better. Amen to that.
Wet hair and sweat pants on, Z and I headed to the hospital. It took us a while to find where we were going and on a Sunday night there was not a lot of personnel around to ask. I was teary again by the time we got to the Labor & Delivery desk to check in.
Anyway, they quickly took us to a room and hooked up the monitor for me and baby. They did the usual work up (urine, blood, questions, blood pressure) and discovered my insurance and address needed to be updated. Seriously? So Z had to leave me to head down to the ER to do that. I thought I would lose it in that room alone, but I watched the clock, rubbed on my belly, and turned on the TV for some distraction. 15 minutes or so later, a nurse came in with the doppler and Zach walked in about the same time. We would FINALLY be able to hear the baby.
After several tries and what felt like the longest minute or two of my life, there it was- a beautiful baby heartbeat - in the 150's. Thank GOD. I cried from relief and calmed down a bit.
2 hours later the dr came in. She had been waiting for my labwork. She had thought perhaps a bladder infection (I tend to get them) but no. She checked my cervix (OUCH!) and said it was high and closed. She had me show her exactly where the pain was, and yeah, she said ligament pain. She said I may have some scar tissue from the surgery last summer that is making it worse. But ya'll, the last time I had cramping this bad was the few months before my surgery discovering the stage 4 endo. This pain is debilitating. It hurts to just sit still. It hurts to bend over at the waist. It hurts to take a deep breath. Call me a wimp. Labor is gonna kick my butt.
I've since been at home, laying in bed with a heating pad. I tried to go to work today but I woke up kinda panicky about it and wound up vomiting in my driveway. Seriously. I haven't vomited the whole pregnancy, but I sure did today.
The pain is still there but not as bad. It's not constant anymore- more random like I had read it 'should' be. Again, Thank God. I called the dr. back today to see if she could offer suggestions to help relieve the pain, b/c quite frankly, Tylenol isn't cutting it. She said hot bath, heating pad, and maybe try a maternity belt. Anyone used one of those before? She said this will probably be around till at least my 20w mark. Yay. So I've gotta suck up the pain and deal b/c there's no way I can stay at home in the bed for the next 4 weeks.
Have you had this round ligament pain? What did you do to help?
PS> I know I had said belly pics, but, as you can see, I was in no shape to pose for pics Sunday! We will do some soon!
